Category: music

“This year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, telecast from Staples Center Sunday night, was a generational takeover and an airing of the widening gap between the traditional corporate music industry and the dynamic, diverse culture that’s redefining the very nature of popular music right now.”

“In some way, the complaints of traditionalists, whether it’s their booing at curtain calls or rants in the opera blogosphere, only gives questionable productions more attention.”

“On Saturday, management had said that small steps were made toward a possible settlement but called the situation fragile.”

“An endlessly variable drum machine, it’s been an essential tool for producers, integral to hip-hop’s sonic development. It’s been used, less prominently, as a live tool too. But in the last few years, thanks to musicians like Araabmuzik, Divinci, Exile and others, it has become a stand-alone object of fascination.”

Amy Chua’s controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is, at first glance, about parenting, not music. Nevertheless, it’s bursting with Chua’s ideas about classical music. She makes it clear that, as far as she’s concerned, it’s hard work, demanding strict adherence to clearly defined goals and standards. It’s fiercely competitive, and if you’re not the best, you’re a “loser.”

“Activision Blizzard, which publishes and distributes the wildly popular game, said Wednesday that it will ‘disband’ the Guitar Hero business unit and ‘discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011’.”

This poorly-received 1983 sequel to Trouble in Tahiti depicted “a middle-class train wreck of a family, plagued by alcoholism, suicide, mental illness, and possibly incest” with “raging bull” music to match. David Patrick Stearns suggests that, one generation later, today’s audiences may be ready to come to grips with the piece.

“The musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have turned down management’s latest contract offer, setting up a showdown that could lead to the cancellation of the rest of the 2010-11 season by the end of the week.”

Mark Swed: “[The] concert hall is not yet what it can be, or should be, or was originally intended to be. … [The] multimedia features Gehry had originally designed” – including the ability to project concert video on the building’s exterior walls, as at Gehry’s latest concert venue in Miami Beach – “were taken away from the architect to save a few pennies. … [But] it is hardly too late to implement them.”

“That this renowned company’s international media profile has slipped since the departure of David Gockley, its general director from 1972 to 2005, is obvious. But … [if] the Houston company has worked more quietly under [Anthony] Freud’s leadership, on present evidence its products are no less distinguished.”